"YOU RAN HIM OVER?!"

We are in the home stretch now, not too much longer till we open. The plan had been to keep the blog updated with the goings on of rehearsals. Unfortunately we are rehearsing two shows. So out of seven days a week, Award may only rehearse two days, but Funeral is rehearsing three. The two left over days you need to get props, do posters, postcards, press releases, coordinate schedule changes, oh and work your full time job, and have some semblance of a life. Give you an example, during the summer my girlfriend and I saw a movie about every weekend. Since we started rehearsals, I haven’t seen a movie since Superbad’s opening weekend. Wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it just leaves little time to blog.

Not that the rehearsals haven’t been eventful. Our first was probably the most. We've been rehearsing in garage of Jay’s sister, Catherine, and brother in law, Jason. They have gone above and beyond, they are also expecting, so our gratitude to them is in the quadruple digits.

Anyway it was one of our first rehearsals for Award; we were in the garage with the doors open, and Jay noticed a homeless man sleeping in the alley against one of the garage doors. Not thinking too much of it, we started rehearsing. Eight pages in, Mal and Josh are going gang busters, but down the alley we hear this thud, and then an “Oh My God.” We walk out into the alley and the see the garage door where the homeless man was sleeping is now opened and a car is half way out of the garage. Yes, you guessed, they ran over the sleeping homeless guy.

Not to long after the cops and the paramedics were on the scene. It was crazy. The paramedics showed up and asked what happened. “We ran over him.” The woman from the car said. “YOU RAN OVER HIM?” was the paramedic’s response. Needless to say the people were freaked and the cop on the scene didn’t make it any better. She kept badgering them about why they didn’t check the door before they pulled out. Like any one would. I wouldn’t have. We found out later, that the homeless in this area do this a lot, so I guess it’s not the worst idea in the world. But still, I’d have never thought to do it. Oh and this cop, who was so concerned about the safety of the people in the alley, tore out of there at like 80 MPH narrowly missing hitting Jay as she stepped back to watch the rehearsal. Chicago’s finest.

The homeless guy ended up being OK. He got up and walked to the ambulance himself. He was limping so luckily they must have run over his leg and not his head or torso. They took him away in the ambulance, so hopefully he got a good night’s sleep someplace not up against a garage door. Jay seemed worried about his shopping cart of stuff. She seemed to think it was full of memories like the last picture he had of his estranged daughter or something. I was pretty sure it was full of cans, and that being homeless, one of his skill sets would be to easily procure a new shopping cart and collection of cans. The homeless can be industrious when they want to be.

This wasn’t the last incident in the garage. During the fight choreography for Funeral, one of Catherine and Jason’s neighbors was concerned about the shouting of the word “Fag” and then the sounds of fighting. Apparently he thought we were gay bashing in the garage, and came over to check. Luckily we convinced him it was only a play. We should have given him a postcard.

We have some time left in the garage. God only knows what will happen next.

THE NAME GAME

One of the things that irritates me about writing is naming characters. It’s important I know, but if I had my druthers, all my characters would have names like “A” or “That Guy” or “Some Random Chick”. It’s too much pressure, like naming a child or something. This is name they are stuck with forever.

There are lots of names in Award and Funeral. Not just main characters, but characters that are mentioned in passing or briefly discussed. You need them to sort of fill out your universe. So to do that you have to sort of grab names from anywhere, either out of your past or out of the ether or wherever. The names of the main characters for Funeral happened this way:

When Jay and I sat down to write Funeral, we agreed the first night that the names of characters would be “Butch”, “Claire”, “Brian” and “Scott”. “Brian” and “Scott” were to be the names of the brothers, who at that time had no last names. So when Jay and I came back in a week and showed each other what we had written, we had a problem. I had made “Brian” the older brother and “Scott” the younger, where as she had “Scott” as the older brother, and “Brian” as the younger brother. After trying to talk about the story for 10 seconds we realized the first thing we needed to do was change the names. She’d say “Scott” and meant the older brother and I thought she meant the younger. So the older brother became “Greg” and the younger brother became “Jake”.

About two days later I decided I hated the name “Jake”. To me, “Jake” sounded like a character John Stamos should play, it sounded like someone cool (I guess this means I think John Stamos is cool). The younger brother wasn’t cool. So “Jake” became “Eric” most likely and subconsciously a throw back to the sarcastic, skinny, uncool character named Eric on That 70’s Show.

We’d like to think the names were sort of picked at random, but that’s not usually not the case. “Claire”, I think, was subconsciously named after Lauren Ambrose’s character from Six Feet Under. I was re-watching the series at the time, and I think it was swimming around my subconscious. “Greg” is the name of my boss at work, but the character wasn't named or based on him. You just say “Greg” and go with that. It’s only in the middle of draft 3 you realize, “Oh yeah, my boss is named Greg”. We also have a friend named Butch, but again that isn’t who we named “Butch” after. Our friend Butch is a woman anyway. This is where the names end up coming from… anywhere, everywhere. So I thought I’d run down some of the other names in the shows and give you some insight as to where they came from.

AWARD
Adam and Reilly - These first names came from my childhood friend and next door neighbor, Adam Reilly. Jay and I felt "Reilly" had a Reese Witherspoon vibe, so we wanted to give her a name that sounded like it could be someone’s last name. Adam was just left over, and it seemed like a good fit for "Adam". So my friend Adam Reilly from Pensacola FL gets a shout out.

Grady Tripp - The script Adam says he is reading is based on “Grady Tripp’s book, The Arsonist’s Daughter”. For those that don’t remember, “Grady Tripp” was Michael Douglas’ character from Wonderboys, and the title of Grady’s book in the movie was The Arsonist’s Daughter.

Marty - An allusion to Martin Scorsese.

Joanne Streams - Our version of Joan Rivers.

Sheila Kelly - Someone I went to college with.

Alexandra Kincaid - First name is a friend of Jay’s.

Lexy Valentine – I am not sure where the name came from. I did work with a guy who’s last name was Valentine, but I am pretty sure Jay made up the name. She may have to blog about it herself.

FUNERAL

Brian Scott - A homage to the original names of “Greg” and “Eric”. Before the names were changed, he was David Stillwagon, someone I went to elementary school with.

Betty – The much talked about mother of “Charles", "Greg" and "Eric” is named after my girlfriend’s mother.

Aunt Helen – Aunt Helen was Jay’s beloved Aunt who passed away. Although the story Greg tells about her, is not one of Aunt Helen’s stories (Aunt Helen had much better stories). Actually the story is from my great grandmother. In an early draft we had two aunts. One that was being honored, “Aunt Helen” and then “Aunt Ester” who was the woman who kept finding the perfume. Jay thought it would be too confusing to have two aunts, so both aunts were combined into Aunt Helen. For the record Aunt Ester was the name of my great grandmother’s sister.

Donnie Wayland – The kid “Greg” beat up as a child is the name of someone I knew in third grade. He was a twin, and his brother's name was Danny.

St. Michaels - The name of the church where Funeral is set comes from a church in Jay’s hometown in Champaign, Illinois.

Charles Wright - The unseen star of Funeral. His name comes from the name of the show Jay and I first wrote together “Charlie”.